Kenneth Slessor: Все стихи поэта

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Advice To Psychologists

YOU spies that pierce the mind with trenches,

Feasting your eyes through private panes,

Who, not content with Heavenly stenches,

Insist on taking up the drains,

For you I've only two suggestions,

Who prowl with torches in this Bog—

Small good you'll get from asking questions;

Walk on your nostrils, like a dog.

Kenneth Slessor

Adventure Bay

SOPHIE'S my world . . . my arm must soon or later

Like Francis Drake turn circumnavigator,

Stem the dark tides, take by the throat strange gales

And toss their spume to stars unknown, as kings

Rain diamonds to the mob . . . then arch my sails

By waterspouts of lace and bubbling rings

Gulfed in deep satin, conquer those warmer waves

Where none but mermaids ride, and the still caves

Kenneth Slessor

Heine In Paris

LATE: a cold smear of sunlight bathes the room;

The gilt lime of winter, a sun grown melancholy old,

Streams in the glass. Outside, ten thousand chimneys fume,

Looping the weather-birds with rings of gold;

The spires of Paris, pricked in an iron spume,

Uprise like stars of water, and mail the sky.

Night comes: the wind is cold.

La Mouche has lit the candles, cleared up the mess.

Kenneth Slessor

A Sunset

THE old Quarry, Sun, with bleeding scales,

Flaps up the gullies, wets their crystal pebbles,

Floating with waters of gold; darkness exhales

Brutishly in the valley; smoke rises in bubbles;

Suddenly we stop at the meeting of two trails.

"Do you remember?"

"But now everything is changed—

Trees ringed with death, the creek with its bells clanking

Kenneth Slessor

Stars

"THESE are the floating berries of the night,

They drop their harvest in dark alleys down,

Softly far down on groves of Venus, or on a little town

Forgotten at the world's edge—and O, their light

Unlocks all closed things, eyes and mouths, and drifts

Quietly over kisses in a golden rain,

Drowning their flight, till suddenly the Cyprian lifts

Her small, white face to the moon, then hides again.

Kenneth Slessor

Marco Polo

READING how Marco Polo came

By bridle-path to Kanbalu,

Forgotten fibres wake to flame,

And smoke old memories anew . . . .

For in a bygone life of mine

I watched the carven rampart shine,

Where Kublai's five-clawed dragons glowed

Like painted wyverns, line on line.

Kenneth Slessor

Chessmen

CHAFING on flags of ebony and pearl,

My paladins are waiting. Loops of smoke

Stoop slowly from the coffee-cups, and curl

In thin fantastic patterns down the room

By cabinets of chinaware, to whirl

With milky-blue tobacco-steam, and fume

Together past our pipes, outside the door.

Soon may we lounge in silence, O my friend,

Kenneth Slessor

Burying Friends

BURYING friends is not a pomp,

Not, indeed, Roman:

Lacking the monument,

Heroic stone;

Nor is it an obscuring parasol,

The pad of customary gloves and cries

And a black leather mourning-carriage

Hung between death and the beholder's eyes.

Kenneth Slessor

Winter Dawn

AT five I wake, rise, rub on the smoking pane

A port to see—water breathing in the air,

Boughs broken. The sun comes up in a golden stain,

Floats like a glassy sea-fruit. There is mist everywhere,

White and humid, and the Harbour is like plated stone,

Dull flakes of ice. One light drips out alone,

One bead of winter-red, smouldering in the steam,

Quietly over the roof-tops—another window

Kenneth Slessor

Pan at Lane Cove

SCALY with poison, bright with flame,

Great fungi steam beside the gate,

Run tentacles through flagstone cracks,

Or claw beyond, where meditate

Wet poplars on a pitchy lawn.

Some seignior of colonial fame

Has planted here a stone-cut faun

Whose flute juts like a frozen flame.

Kenneth Slessor

A Surrender

WHEN to those Venusbergs, thy breasts,

By wars of love and moonlight batteries,

My lips have stormed—O pout thy mouth above,

Lean down those culverins twain, and bid me spike

Their bells with kissing, and their powder steal,

And by night-marches take their garrisons—

No blood shall stain those battlefields of lace

But all their snows run dappled with deep roses,

Kenneth Slessor

Last Trams

THAT street washed with violet

Writes like a tablet

Of living here; that pavement

Is the metal embodiment

Of living here; those terraces

Filled with dumb presences

Lobbed over mattresses,

Kenneth Slessor